A new highways website dubbed the ‘Google of training’ is due to be unveiled at Traffex this year by the Road Safety Markings Association.
The interactive site covers everything from management development to operative training and is being showcased at the RSMA’s stand in advance of it going live on 1 May.
In advance of Traffex, the RSMA has also launched its 2015 manifesto, highlighting the safety group’s concerns about financing local roads, the importance of safety markings for driverless cars.
The trade body highlighted the ‘deeply worrying issue’ of the disparity in funding between Highways England, which has a secure funding settlement of £15bn until 2021 and local roads, which are subject to ‘powerful local pressures’.
The news follows the RSMA LifeLines survey of 7,000km of local roads which revealed that half of road markings either need urgent replacement or scheduling for replacement.
RSMA national director George Lee, said: ‘Despite assurances of their commitment to road safety, those responsible for the upkeep of our roads continue to neglect the most cost effective safety device available to road engineers: the white line. We now have a patchwork quilt effect across the UK, with different authorities maintaining roads to wildly differing standards, depending on their budgetary constraints.’
He described the situation as a ‘recipe for chaos’ and warned that ‘road users are not getting the roads or the safety levels they deserve’.
The RSMA suggested that by 2025 ‘at least half the travel of Europe’s roads will be in vehicles that can read the road ahead including markings and signs’.
RSMA officers called for the EU to adopt ‘the simple and memorable ‘150 x 150’ road lines standard already in widespread use’ in advance of driverless cars.
The means that lanes and edge markings should be a consistent 150 millimetres wide and that markings in dry conditions should reflect light at 150 millicandela – providing uniformity across the network.
Traffex and Parkex returns to Hall 5 at the NEC Birmingham on the 21 - 23 April, 2015.
For free tickets or more information about Traffex and Parkex 2015 please visit www.traffex.com or www.parkex.co.uk. Click here to view the Traffex Exhibitor List or the Parkex Exhibitor List.
